


Everything Stays

by corporateCasual



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: #FreeRick, Freeform, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:55:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corporateCasual/pseuds/corporateCasual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Stays

Rick was barely responsive when he felt the thin fingers wrap around his arms, gripping tight enough to whiten their knuckles as they hauled his creaking frame from the ventilation shaft’s open panel. His eyes rolled back and forth in the strain, making it impossible for him to tell apart rapid flashes of dreamy darkness from the slick sickness of artificial light. Gods, where was he...?

 _Focus, you old fuck_ , his inner Rick commanded, and with substantial strain and groans that didn’t even seem to touch the back of his awfully parched throat, his vision swam back into focus until it finally settled enough to make out the wiry figure that was just now hauling him onto his back. From what he could tell, the mess of curly brown could hardly measure up to him in stature, and his gangly limbs dangled dangerously close to the ground as the smaller figure grunted from the effort. He was taller than he remembered. The groan left him in a pathetic whimpering rattle that crashed in with the realisation of pain coursing through his chest.

“Don’t give up on me just yet, Rick.”

The lack of a tremor in it was odd, unfamiliar.

“Took you long enough,” he wheezed, allowing the bridge of his nose to rest on the back of his captor’s bare neck. Three years too long, in fact.

Morty scoffed below him, and continued the odd skidding jog through the stretch of medical bay halls. They reached a set of double doors at its end, and grunting, he leaned the sharp of his shoulder into them until sterile clinical light gave way to the barely visible prison yard. A distance away, a narrow hole had been cut into the now-dead electrical fencing.

“It’s a few meters away,” he tells Rick, bending down until the old man’s feet settle shakily onto the ground. He catches him by the crooks of his elbows when his grandfather’s legs buckle beneath him.

“I’ll help you,” he insists, “can you try to walk?”

Rick grunts, part confirmation and part stubborn disapproval at being seen like this by his own Morty of all people. The kid nods in encouragement, and then hooks his arm under Rick’s armpit and around his back, hoisting the old man until his heels get a stable understanding of solidity. He’s half-dragged to the emerging silhouette of an old capital scout ship just beyond the wire fence as involuntary gasps escape him every time the shock-stiffened joints bend to support his weight.

It seems like a strange half dream; Rick had had thousands of fantasies of the same scenario, escaping either half dead or laughing wildly as he ran his hands through his hair and whooped and hollered, always with his ever loyal companion by his side, fleeing this gods forsaken world for earth, _his_ earth, tearing wildly through the void and leaving a string of galactic debris as the only reminder his foes would ever have of the day they captured Rick-fucking-Sanchez.

But all of these scenarios had happened in hazes of alcohol deprived stupor while his drug-addled brain forced him to black out in favor of fantastical denial; his withering body’s only hope in surviving that concrete hell-on-earth.

He must’ve blacked out again before they had reached the ship because his consciousness jolted him into a painful arch just as Morty began to seat him against the cold leather of the co-pilot’s seat. He let out a weak gargling yell when he felt his coronary artery spasm. It was a familiar feeling that he half-expected the forceful shock of a guard’s baton to still.

“Christ,” Morty choked, “fuck, oh god, oh god, Rick just stay with me here.”

From the corner of his eye, Morty hauled back a little too rough on the stick shift, forcing the ship to launch clumsily into the air with its landing gear exposed. The inertia from their rapid ascent into the planet’s suffocatingly thick stratosphere knocked the breath out of him, forcing his head to propel back against the worn upholstery.

There was a minute of strained silence as the kid grappled at as much speed as the old junk scouter could handle, until finally they came to a stand still behind the debris coverage of some dull dwarf planet’s asteroid belt. 

There was a click as Rick allowed his eyes to shut in quiet relief, and in a second Morty was pawing desperately at the old man’s grimy once-upon-a-time white wife beater, scarred along the sides with blackened electric burns on the cotton-canvas fabric. His exhausted brain held onto consciousness to a barely audible chorus of “please god, oh god, Rick what did they do to you, oh god”. There was the sound of ripping cloth that lent him the welcome sensation of the ship’s cool atmosphere.

The sound of silence followed with the sensation of two hands gripping against his forearms, tight and trembling as if Rick himself was some kind of quickly fading anchor.

“Oh g-god,” he heard between the hiccups and sniffling, “what, what the hell --”

Morty watched the rise and fall of his chest, watched the old man as he greedily fed on the ship’s recycled oxygen while he examined the mess of bruises and black burns that stretched across the aged skin. Ribs poked out in exposed ridges, enough for Morty to tell which ones had been broken repeatedly and healed in barely passable conditions. Freshly healed wounds littered themselves over old scars, making it difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

“R-Rick,” he hiccupped, barely above a whisper. His grandfather’s eyes flickered to life at the sudden call.

“Mm?” he rumbled, and gave out a gentle _oof_ when the younger’s forehead, matted with sweat and contorted in a way he couldn’t see, pushed against his chest in defeat.

Despite the numbness, he could just make out the sensation of something trickling down the bare myriad of scar tissue.

He doesn’t even notice as his hand raises to rest on the crown of his grandson’s locks, brushing back at the stray cowlicks until he drifts off into a black, dreamless void.

**Author's Note:**

> long time no write, guys. wanted to get this in before season 3 boots back up.


End file.
